he will laugh
by altschmerz
Summary: Ryan Wolfe's Hebrew name is Yitzhak. This seems especially appropriate as he sits in the waiting room of the hospital between bouts of nervous hysterics - he always did laugh at inappropriate times. There's nothing he can do to help Eric now, so he does what his mother always did when confronted with hospitals and helplessness. "MiShebeirach avoteinu…" (gen, season 5 ep 15 tag)


i really love finding out there are jewish actors on shows i like because it means i get to point at their characters and go Ours Now. i present to you: jewish ryan wolfe and that one episode where eric got shot.

warning for discussion of the fact that he got, y'know, shot in the head.

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Yitzhak - Hebrew, masculine. "He will laugh."

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Ryan Wolfe's Hebrew name is Yitzhak, and his mother always jokes that it must have been divinely inspired, given how well that name has fit him. He spent the morning of his Bar Mitzvah in half-hysterics, nervous energy boiling up and over as laughter. He's always been a person with an unfortunate habit of laughing at extremely inappropriate times. Joy manifests itself as laughter, but so does fear, anxiety. Sadness. It's not easy to explain to people, why you laugh at funerals.

They all go together, Calleigh and Horatio and Ryan. That's the first time he goes to the hospital to visit, before they know whether or not he's going to live. The words had made Ryan laugh when he'd heard them.

Shot. In the head. No fucking way, because Horatio had said get to the hospital, and why go the hospital if he was dead already? But he hadn't been dead, he'd been alive with machines helping keeping him that way. Ryan had stood by the wall, unable to take another step closer, and left quickly to help with the case.

The case is over now, but Eric's ordeal is not, and Ryan finds himself right back where he'd been the first time, this time alone, leaning against a wall and realizing a number of terrible things all over again.

Eric looks… wrong. He looks wounded and vulnerable and there's something so wrong about seeing such a vivacious, strong person laid so low. Ryan feels a sharp burst of terrified laughter crackle to life in his chest. He barely chokes it down and looks around the room, eyes skittering from object to object, any source of distraction from Eric. There's a chair, looking like it exists somewhere between the torturous chairs of the waiting room and the comfort of the lab, and Ryan doesn't manage to squash the laugh this time at the sight of it.

It's just so cliched. The solitary chair in the hospital room, silent but for the persistent sounds of monitors, reporting like town criers in the square, he's still alive, he's still alive. Ryan supposes that he's breaking the pattern, here. There's never laughter in the movies. No high, thready chuckles setting the tone askew.

Ryan takes a few deep breaths and pushes off from the wall. His chest jags up and down unevenly as he reaches the focal point of the room. Sitting down, he looks side to side, almost expecting to see someone else there. Wishing he would see someone else there. Anyone who could help him bear the weight of seeing Eric like this.

The thought occurs to Ryan again, attention finally on his felled friend's face. He got shot. In the head. It's no wonder they'd thought he was dead, that he and Calleigh had rushed to a hospital expecting to be escorted to a morgue. People don't get shot in the head and then open their eyes, even though according to Calleigh, Eric already had, though he'd been confused and not all there.

They don't open their eyes, get up and walk around, go back to work. They don't smile and talk and hang out with their friends. They don't ever laugh again.

And yet this is what they are hoping Eric will do. They are conducting themselves like he got sick, like he got hit by a car, like he'd been stabbed, not shot in the head. The absurdity brings the laughter back, and Ryan bends his head over near the rail of the bed, trying to contain it.

When he looks up, Ryan catches sight of Eric's hand, laughably intact just a few inches from Ryan's. It seems so strange that his hand should look as whole and strong as always, when it lies so still on starched white-blue sheets. Ryan lifts his own hand, hovering uncertainly over Eric's, hesitant to touch him. What if he did more damage? Irrational, sure, but so is surviving a bullet in your brain and then waking up after. Why chance tipping the scales now?

For lack of being able to fix anything, unable to do so much as press a grounding palm over his friend's wrist, Ryan is left anchorless. He wishes he were back in the lab, anywhere but here with frightened laughter and Eric's motionless form, but at the same time he can't leave. So, with nothing left to do, Ryan thinks back to his mother, to what Miriam Wolfe had always done when confronted with hospitals and overwhelming helplessness.

The words of the prayer for healing come back to him quickly, like a song he'd learned as a child, words returning almost without any effort at all when the melody drifted across a sidewalk from an open door. Ryan sings quietly, but it sounds loud in the otherwise wordless room.

"MiShebeirach avoteinu," he sings, voice cracking at the abnormal volume, stress making it brittle. Ryan's fingers curl tightly around the rail of the bed beside Eric's still hand, rather than holding the hand itself. The prayer comes over Ryan's lips like he'd last said them yesterday, and he can hear the anxiety in his own voice.

That's how he remembers learning it, after all. The MiShebeirach was an anxious prayer, his earliest memory of it in a hospital like this one, clutching the edge of his mother's jacket while she sang quietly over his aunt's bed. This is what we do for our family, Miriam had said to her young son. This is what we do when we can't do anything more.

There are a hundred different versions of this prayer, but the one Ryan sings is the one his mother taught him, the one she learned sitting beside her mother in Saturday morning services. It's short, and Ryan loops it, singing it all the way through twice before he stops, shaking his head and snorting.

"He's Catholic," Ryan mutters to himself, fingers flexing around the warming metal of the railing. "This is stupid. He's Catholic, Jewish prayers don't mean shit to him. You're a scientist, Wolfe, c'mon."

Science could tell him any number of things about this situation, about the odds of recovering now that he's already woken and recognized Calleigh, shown himself able to speak and remember things, if muddled and confused. He could tell himself about percentages and biology and resilience, but the only languages Ryan Wolfe speaks right now are fear and Hebrew, so he focuses on the one that will keep his head together until Eric proves his isn't broken beyond repair.

He starts again, the prayer echoing offbeat, out of tune with the beeping of the heart monitor. Halfway through, something stops him. A touch on the back of his hand.

Eric. Eric is awake.

"Wh-" Eric tries, face creasing in pain, stopping after the first sound of the word. Ryan turns his hand over and criss-crosses his fingers through Eric's, holding it tightly. Now that his eyes are open, his hoarse throat trying hard to form sounds, it seems less dangerous, less friable to touch him, to give him something to hold onto while he tries to wrestle his voice back. "Wh… What…" Eric tries again. Ryan doesn't interrupt, letting him have the time he needs. "Was that?"

"Hebrew," Ryan tells him, cheeks reddening. "I know you're Catholic, and it's a Jewish prayer, but-"

"'S pretty. Couldn't h..." Eric frowns, eyes squeezed tight shut, all of his effort focused on speaking. "Hear it all. Would you…"

"Yeah," Ryan tells him, smiling. "Sure."

He starts the prayer again.


End file.
